J.J. Gibson – Affordances

James J. Gibson From: The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception Chapter 8 THE THEORY OF !AFFORDANCES I have described the environment as the surfaces that separate substances from the medium in which the animals live. But I have also described what the environment affords animals, mentioning the terrain, shelters, water, fire, objects, tools, other !animals, and human displays. How do we go from surfaces to affordances? And if there is information in light for the perception of surfaces, is there information for the perception of what they afford? Perhaps the composition and layout of surfaces consti- !tute what they afford. If so, to perceive them is to perceive what they afford. This is! a radical hypothesis, for it implies that the “values” and “meanings” of things in the environment can be directly perceived. Moreover, it would explain the sense in which values and meanings are external to the perceiver. The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill. The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, but !the noun affordance is not. I have made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment. The antecedents of the term and the history of the concept will be treated later; for the present, let us consider examples of an affordance. If a terrestrial surface is nearly horizontal (instead of slanted), nearly flat (instead of convex or concave), and sufficiently extended (relative to the size of the animal) and if its substance is rigid (relative to the weight of the animal), then the surface affords support. It is a surface of support, and we call it a substratum, ground, or floor. It is stand-on-able, permitting an upright posture for quadrupeds and bipeds. It is therefore walk-on-able and run-over-able. It is not sink-into-able like a surface of water or a swamp, that is, not for heavy terrestrial animals. Support for water bugs is different. Note that the four properties listed—horizontal, flat, extended, and rigid—would be physical properties of a surface if they were measured with the scales and standard units used in physics. As an affordance of support for a species of animal, however, they have to be measured relative to the animal. They are unique for that animal. They are not just abstract physical properties. They have unity relative to the posture and behavior of the animal being considered. So an affordance cannot be measured as we !measure in physics.! Terrestrial surfaces, of course, are also climb-on-able or fall-off-able or get-underneath- able or bump-into-able relative to the animal. Different layouts afford different! behaviors for different animals, and different mechanical encounters. The human species in some cultures has the habit of sitting as distinguished from kneeling or squatting. !If a surface of support with the four properties is also knee-high above the ground, it! affords sitting on. We call it a seat in general, or a stool, bench, chair, and so on, in !particular. It may be natural like a ledge or artificial like a couch. It may have various !shapes, as long as its functional layout is that of a seat. The color and texture of the surface are irrelevant. Knee-high for a child is not the same as knee-high for an adult, !so the affordance is relative to the size of the individual. But if a surface is horizontal, !flat, extended, rigid, and knee-high relative to a perceiver, it can in fact be sat upon. !If it can be discriminated as having just these properties, it should look sit-on-able. If! it does, the affordance is perceived visually. If the surface properties are seen relative! to the body surfaces, the self, they constitute a seat and have meaning.! There could be other examples. The different substances of the environment have !different affordances for nutrition and for manufacture. The different objects of the! environment have different affordances for manipulation. The other animals afford, !above all, a rich and complex set of interactions, sexual, predatory, nurturing, fighting, !playing, cooperating, and communicating. What other persons afford, comprises the whole realm of social significance for human beings. We pay the closest attention to !the optical and acoustic information that specifies what the other person is, invites, !threatens, and does. THE NICHES OF THE ENVIRONMENT Ecologists have the concept of a niche. A species of animal is said to utilize or occupy !a certain niche in the environment. This is not quite the same as the habitat of the !species; a niche refers more to how an animal lives than to where it lives. I suggest that! a niche is a set of affordances.! The natural environment offers many ways of life, and different animals have! different ways of life. The niche implies a kind of animal, and the animal implies a kind! of niche. Note the complementarity of the two. But note also that the environment as! a whole with its unlimited possibilities existed prior to animals. The physical, chemical,! meteorological, and geological conditions of the surface of the earth and the pre- existence! of plant life are what make animal life possible. They had to be invariant for animals! to evolve. There are all kinds of nutrients in the world and all sorts of ways of getting food;! all sorts of shelters or hiding places, such as holes, crevices, and caves; all sorts of !materials for making shelters, nests, mounds, huts; all kinds of locomotion that the !environment makes possible, such as swimming, crawling, walking, climbing, flying.! These offerings have been taken advantage of; the niches have been occupied. But, for !all we know, there may be many offerings of the environment that have not been taken! advantage of, that is, niches not yet occupied. !In architecture a niche is a place that is suitable for a piece of statuary, a place into !which the object fits. In ecology a niche is a setting of environmental features that are !suitable for an animal, into which it fits metaphorically.! An important fact about the affordances of the environment is that they are in a! sense objective, real, and physical, unlike values and meanings, which are often supposed to be subjective, phenomenal, and mental. But, actually, an affordance is neither !an objective property nor a subjective property; or it is both if you like. An affordance !cuts across the dichotomy of subjective-objective and helps us to understand its inadequacy. It is equally a fact of the environment and a fact of behavior. It is both physical and psychical, yet neither. An affordance points both ways, to the environment and to the observer. !The niche for a certain species should not be confused with what some animal !psychologists have called the phenomenal environment of the species. This can be taken! erroneously to be the “private world” in which the species is supposed to live, the! “subjective world,” or the world of “consciousness.” The behavior of observers depends !on their perception of the environment, surely enough, but this does not mean that! their behavior depends on a so-called private or subjective or conscious environment.! The organism depends on its environment for its life, but the environment does not! depend on the organism for its existence. MAN’S ALTERATION OF THE! NATURAL ENVIRONMENT In the last few thousand years, as everybody now realizes, the very face of the earth !has been modified by man. The layout of surfaces has been changed, by cutting,! clearing, leveling, paving, and building. Natural deserts and mountains, swamps and !rivers, forests and plains still exist, but they are being encroached upon and reshaped !by man-made layouts. Moreover, the substances of the environment have been partly !converted from the natural materials of the earth into various kinds of artificial materials !such as bronze iron concrete and bread. Even the medium of the environment—the air for us and the water for fish—is becoming slowly altered despite the restorative! cycles that yielded a steady state for millions of years prior to man.! Why has man changed the shapes and substances of his environment? To change! what it affords him. He has made more available what benefits him and less pressing !what injures him. In making life easier for himself, of course, he has made life harder !for most of the other animals. Over the millennia, he has made it easier for himself to! get food, easier to keep warm, easier to see at night, easier to get about, and easier to !train his offspring. !This is not a new environment—an artificial environment distinct from the natural! environment—but the same old environment modified by man. It is a mistake to !separate the natural from the artificial as if there were two environments; artifacts have to be manufactured from natural substances. It is also a mistake to separate the cultural! environment from the natural environment, as if there were a world of mental products distinct from the world of material products. There is only one world, however diverse,! and all animals live in it, although we human animals have altered it to suit ourselves.! We have done so wastefully, thoughtlessly, and, if we do not mend our ways, fatally.! The fundamentals of the environment—the substances, the medium, and the! surfaces—are the same for all animals. No matter how powerful men become they are !not going to alter the fact of earth, air, and water—the lithosphere, the atmosphere,! and the hydrosphere, together with the interfaces that separate them.

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